[Kingdom Hearts] Fic: A Matter of Hubris
Yesterday, kytha and I had this little fourth wall breaking RP in which Marluxia and Vexen were civil to one another long enough to snark fanfiction, Axel, and the extreme gayness of the Kingdom Hearts franchise.
...That has absolutely nothing to do with this fic.
Spoilers for CoM.
A Matter of Hubris
Death was not what Marluxia expected.
Not that he thought about death very much, and certainly never his own. It had gone without question that he would die as the dictator of some country somewhere-- or perhaps the leader of a cult, he wasn't picky-- surrounded by a bevy of attractive young women. Hopefully, it would have been a harem, but he knew that wasn't likely in this day and age, and he was not an unreasonable man.
He had not expected the gloomy, subterranean realm that confronted him. In a life now twice removed, he'd been told of endless fields with festival lights clinging to the trees, and family and friends to stave off loneliness. By comparison, he had always felt that one simply ceased to exist; a philosophy that freed him from the time consuming necessity of constructing a satisfactory afterlife.
Plus, it felt kinder than spending eternity with family and friends.
But even that fate was better than wandering the interminable labyrinth of the Underworld. Every chamber, every tunnel, every last possible stone radiated the barren emptiness that indicated that nothing could, or would ever, grow here. It wasn't that the Underworld was dead, so much as it wasn't alive, and never had been. It was more oppressive than anything Marluxia's overactive imagination could conjure up, though still preferable to the river. He wasn't entirely convinced that the swirling vortex that pulled souls down to who-knew-where was a river, or anything that had any passing familiarity with one. "His kind" didn't belong there, which he decided suited him well enough when he saw souls descend, wailing and miserable, into the miasma. The pall that clung to the entire chamber had
well, made his skin crawl.
Not that he was afraid of anything, that was ridiculous.
There was little doubt that there were others like himself, somewhere, but he hadn't seen them and he didn't much care. Then again, supposedly, he couldn't care much about anything, so perhaps he was more apathetic than he normally was.
Eventually, he felt, the boredom would drive him to madness. That was the sort of thing that happened when one was isolated and left idle for too long; he'd seen it.
Still, Marluxia was certain that he hadn't been dead long enough to go mad by the time he heard the first voice since his ignoble defeat.
At first there was only a mutter of accusations, hesitant and unsure, but the voice grew louder, more insistent, as it gained confidence. The words flowed, rushing around him in an angry torrent saturated with bitter loathing. The sound pooled in the chamber, bouncing off roughly hewn rock faces until it was an indistinguishable jumble of nonsense. It was the sort of tirade he was used to, though normally he would have interrupted before now. He had never had much patience for other people's egos.
If he opened his eyes, he would see the source of all the blather, but there was a comfortable sense of detachment in believing that what berated him now was just a disembodied voice, worse off than he was. So he sat, his back to the wall, and let someone else's anger swamp his hearing and drown out the silence that had been ringing in his ears for far too long.
"You'd feel better if you swore," he advised the voice, on a whim.
The diatribe ended in mid-sentence, and the echoes faded away as the air filled with the wordless tension of an offended Nobody.
"It's true. I'm sure you remember how."
After that, all he heard was the sharp click of boots storming down a corridor.
*****
No matter how much he explored, the tunnels went on infinitely-- it was physically impossible, he knew, but then the afterlife had surprised him before. Marluxia felt a glimmer of hope when he came to a cavern that looked different from the ones he'd seen before. Overhead was a gathering of what looked like cirrus clouds, clinging together like wisps of cotton, completely defying the rules of gravity that insisted that it join the cold mist that swirled around his boots.
The room was dimmer, dreary even for the unpleasantly brooding world. Nevertheless, it was different, which meant that, maybe, he was going in the right direction.
Except that the cavern had no exit save for the one he'd entered through. He kicked the wall in frustration, then ran his hands through his hair as he counted backwards from fifty. There probably wasn't much sense in trying to escape the afterlife, he reminded himself.
Though it certainly didn't hurt to try.
The mist absorbed most of the sound, and he didn't hear the warning footsteps of someone approaching until they were disorientingly close by. Not even dark corridors had allowed the other Nobodies to sneak up on him like that; the telltale scent of darkness made sure of that.
The intruder stopped behind him, and spoke before he could turn around: "'Kill the traitor,' was it?" The question was quiet, every word brittle with hostility but there was no trace of the vitriol from before.
It was out of character enough that he turned to face Vexen, who watched him with the disapproving glower of an angry schoolmarm. "I seem to recall that coming up, yes."
He couldn't quite describe the expression that passed over the other man's face. It twitched. "And here you are."
"You, too."
"You have a warped definition of the word." The familiar threads of histrionic anger began to creep into his voice. There was never any use in engaging Vexen in meaningful discourse; Marluxia had no interest in science and Vexen couldn't stand to talk to someone so much younger than himself as an equal. Since Marluxia refused to be condescended to, it left them little room for civility.
He tilted his head, thoughtful. "If that makes you feel better, then I suppose I do."
A scandalized hiss heralded the scientist losing his temper. "You tried to take over!"
"That does ring a bell, yes."
The words came in a rush, tumbling over one another as if they couldn't escape fast enough. "In what backwards reality does that not qualify you as a traitor? How did you--"
"What," he interrupted, hoping to distract Vexen, "is the difference between a traitor and a revolutionary? Hypothetically speaking." There wouldn't be any chance of convincing him, but there was an art in irritating Vexen in such a way that he would leave in disgust.
"How can you presume the title of revolutionary?"
Anyone else would have said something witty in response to such an opening. Marluxia couldn't help but feel disappointed, but not everyone had the requisite skills in repartee that he was accustomed to. "Quite easily, really. Care to hear me do it again?"
"A traitor is a revolutionary that loses," Vexen snapped, sourly.
Marluxia gave him an appraising look. "Touchè."
They stared at one another in silence, one unappeased and the other unruffled. "Why?" Vexen asked, stiffly.
Why what, Marluxia wanted to ask, there were too many answers to that question. He picked the one he felt was most important. "Your leader--"
"--yours as well--"
"--is delusional and completely ineffectual. Or had you not noticed?" Marluxia waved a hand, dismissively.
That Vexen didn't deny it was all the answer he needed. "You honestly think you-- you!-- could do better?"
"Clearly, I do think so, yes. Did," he amended.
"What possessed you to think that it would have been a good idea?"
There had been little doubt that the conversation would turn to this topic at some point or another. "I admit that I made several tactical errors--"
"Several!"
The naked disdain rankled, but he answered smoothly: "Well. One, actually, it was a rather centralized issue."
Vexen looked ready to strike him, and Marluxia found that he would have liked to see the scientist try. Goading him was easy enough, but for all that he had the shortest fuse of the Nobodies, Vexen shied away from physical altercations the most. Even against the man that had ordered his execution.
Marluxia let the moment play itself out, until it was too late for a proper retort and he changed the subject entirely. "How do you keep finding me?" The Underworld seemed endless, with no entrance or exit that he had yet been able to find. It was a statistical impossibility that Vexen could run into him twice through dumb luck.
"Zexion. 'He's over there, sulking.'" He did a poor imitation of Zexion's voice, making VI sound like a teenage girl.
Sulking, how idiotic. "Zexion's dead, which means Lexaeus must be, also." There wasn't a chance that one would die without being closely followed by the other. Neither of them did anything without being closely followed by the other. "I suppose the entire castle...."
Vexen's next words were venomous: "Axel isn't."
Of course the weasel wasn't. "No matter, no one lives forever."
"No matter?"
"His antics are bound to catch up with him, and when they do...." Marluxia shrugged, eloquently. "I don't much approve of traitors."
It was a wonder, he reflected, that Vexen didn't hit him.